


we'll meet along the way i know

by katsumi



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Season/Series 04 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-01
Updated: 2017-06-01
Packaged: 2018-11-07 08:04:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11054790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katsumi/pseuds/katsumi
Summary: Clarke keeps trying to radio Bellamy every day, even though she can never get through. But then, three months after praimfaya, she hears a voice on the line.





	we'll meet along the way i know

**Author's Note:**

> The finale gave me feelings and then this happened. I tried to keep it aligned with canon as much as possible, including writing it so that none of the science within should be viewed as accurate in any way. I don't know how radios work, guys. I made that up. That's on me.

She’s lying on one of the tables in the lab, bare shoulders pressed against the cool metal, when she hears it: a soft, unmistakable crackle.

The radio.

Clarke lurches up and scrambles for the radio down by her feet. She’s breathing hard and heavy, the sound like thunder in the quiet, quiet room, and so she almost doesn’t make out the words that stutter into the air.

“Did that work?”

Clarke folds her aching knees, hunching over the radio. Three months she’s been trying this, three whole months of speaking to dead air, but now...it seems too much to hope for.

“Bellamy?” she whispers.

The silence that follows seems to last years. And then the voice again: light, even-keeled.

“Crap, I can’t tell if that worked.”

 _Monty_.

Clarke exhales, short and sharp. The relief is torrential.

“Monty! Monty, can you hear me?”

Her knuckles are white against the radio as she waits for Monty’s voice to re-emerge from the static. But minutes pass in silence, and then the connection cuts out.

She shuts her eyes, biting her lip so hard that white stars of pain spark behind her eyelids.

 _Be calm_ , she tells herself. _Monty made it._ _Monty is alive._

It’s not enough to satisfy the panic that prickles at her spine, remnants of so many questions she’d been pushing out of her mind that now demand to be answered, but it’s something. It’s a blessing. 

It’s a start.

 

* * *

 

A week later (day 99, according to the tally she’s been scratching into the floor by the rocket launch site), she hears that same crackle while rummaging through one of the supply closets. She winds up dropping a full box of tools in her scramble to get to the radio; they clatter against the floor like a round of gunfire. 

“Hello?” she yelps. “Monty? Can you hear me?” A breath. “Bellamy? Bellamy, are you there?” 

There’s a rush of static, and then Monty’s voice bites through, clearer than before. “Okay,” he says, bright. “I think I’ve got it this time. Hello?” 

“Monty!” Clarke can feel tears at the corners of her eyes. “Monty, it’s me!” 

But Monty just coughs and says again, louder: “Hello? Can anyone hear me?” 

“I can. Monty, I can hear you, I—” 

“Is anyone out there? Hello?” 

Clarke closes her eyes. “But you can’t hear me, can you?” 

She knew it was too much to hope for.

“I’m trying to…” Monty trails off, sighing. “Can anyone from the bunker hear me? Octavia? Miller? You guys out there?” 

He doesn’t ask for her. She didn’t think he would; that she’s alive is as big a surprise to her as it would be to them. But it’s an eerie thing, hearing her friends’ names without her own: like she’s a ghost spying on a conversation that doesn’t belong to her. 

“Tell me, Monty,” she whispers, knowing full well that he can’t hear. “Just tell me that you’re alright.”

And like some kind of guardian angel, floating up there amongst the stars, he does. 

“If someone’s out there listening, this is Monty Green from Skaikru.” He speaks with the same focused determination she remembers; her heart swells with pride at the sound. “We made it to the Ark. The algae farm is almost fully operational, and we’ve got enough food growing to last us at least a while. We’re okay.”

“Raven?” Clarke wonders aloud, her voice catching. “Bellamy?” 

But Monty’s talking faster now, urgent. “I’m pretty sure once we get too far in our orbit, this connection will break. So if someone out there can hear me, I guess I’ll try again in...about 90 minutes?”

He pauses. Then, quietly: “I really hope someone can hear me.” 

“I can hear you,” Clarke whispers. In the echoing quiet of the lab, the words seem loud. “I can hear you.”

 

* * *

 

She waits the full 90 minutes slumped against the wall, clutching the radio between her fingers. There are things to do—corners of this labyrinthian lab that she still hasn’t fully scavenged—but she’s not going to miss her chance to get back in contact. The radio gets reception here, so here she stays. 

But the 90 minutes come and go, and still nothing. Clarke falls asleep later that night (not that night is easily distinguishable from day down here) still lodged in place, the radio cradled in her lap. 

The day stretches into two, then three, and then the antsiness is too much to contain. She can’t just sit here for five years. She won’t _survive_ the full five years if she just sits here. She just needs to have faith that eventually, Monty will come through. He’s never let her down before. 

And sure enough, almost two weeks later, the radio cracks to life. 

“Hello?” 

Clarke glances up from her dinner (a square strip of dried meat). Her heart is already racing in her chest, but she refuses to get too excited this time. She tugs the radio closer. 

“Hello?” Monty says again. “This is the Ark, trying to get in touch with the Polis bunker. I, uh, I made a few modifications, so I’m hoping...is anyone out there?” 

Clarke presses the button with a feeble smile. “Hi, Monty.” 

Nothing. (Predictably.) 

But then, after a few sputtering surges of static, Monty continues: “This is probably a long shot, but...if someone is out there, can you make sure your radio is tuned to channel 81?” 

Clarke’s breath catches. Slowly, heart hammering, she slides the dial on the radio up a few notches. 

“Monty?”

She hears a gasp, and she almost cries from the relief of it. 

“Yes!” Monty yelps, breathless. “Yes, it’s me! Octavia, is that you?” 

Even though she knows he can’t see her, she shakes her head. When she speaks, her words sound calm, so far removed from her racing pulse. “No. Monty, it’s Clarke.”

Silence follows, so long that Clarke almost thinks the connection has dropped. Then: “Clarke?” 

“Yeah.” A tear she didn’t even realize was forming slips down her cheek. “Yeah, Monty. It’s me.” 

“Oh my god. Clarke, oh my _god_. I’m—I’m so glad to hear your voice.” 

Clarke sniffs a laugh. “Back at you.”

“How did you—” He stops himself. “Wait, we don’t have time for that. This connection could drop at any moment. The timing has something to do with our orbit around the Earth, and I haven’t worked out all the specifics yet. But I’m going to go get the others, so stay where you are, okay? Don’t move.” 

“I won’t. Monty, is everyone okay? Did everyone survive the launch?” 

“Yeah,” Monty says, and even though they blast off months ago, he still sounds in awe of it. “Yeah, we’re okay.” 

That should be enough. But even so, she can’t help but add: “Bellamy?” 

“He’s here,” says Monty. “He’s fine. I’m going to go find him right now, okay? Just stay where you are, Clarke.” 

Clarke laughs, glancing around the lab. It’s not like there’s anywhere else to go. 

A part of her wants to tell Monty to stay on the line until the connection breaks, to talk as much as she possibly can before she’s plunged into silence again. But if their situations were reversed—if she were in space, having spent the past three months thinking Bellamy dead—she would need the truth immediately. 

“Okay,” she agrees. “I’ll stay put. Talk to you soon?”

“As soon as possible,” Monty promises.

 

* * *

 

 _As soon as possible_ turns out not to mean within the next hour, or even the next two. But eventually, just when Clarke’s starting to worry something’s happened, the radio cracks to life with a voice she’d recognize anywhere. 

“Hello?” 

_Bellamy_.

It takes a moment before she can even bring herself to respond. 

“Yeah,” she manages. “I’m here.” 

“Clarke?” His voice is scraped thin, disbelieving. 

“Bellamy. It’s me.” 

He lets out a harsh, choked sound that’s almost enough to get her to start crying all over again. (Almost, because she can’t cry with Bellamy listening, not when he’s so far away. He doesn’t need more to worry about.) 

“Clarke.” She’s missed the way her name sounds on his lips, although she could do without the anguish in his voice. “Clarke, are you alright?” 

“I am.” 

“But the radiation—” 

“Turns out you were right to hold out hope for the nightblood solution. I thought you were just placating me.”

“I _was_ ,” says Bellamy. “I didn’t really think you could—shit, Clarke, from up here, it looks like the whole planet’s on fire.”

Clarke closes her eyes. “I know. But I made it back to the lab in time.” 

“The lab?” His voice quickens with panic. “We took most of the supplies with us. There’s not enough food or water there to last you five years.” 

“Bellamy. Nightblood, remember? I don’t need to last five years. Just a few more months, maybe. Until the worst of the weather dies down.” And then, to stop what she’s sure will be a litany of questions, she asks: “You’re okay?” 

“Yeah. Raven and Monty are both here with me right now. They miss you.” 

Clarke smiles. “I miss them.” And because it seems ridiculous to avoid the truth after all this: “And I miss you.” 

He laughs, rough. 

“Clarke, you have no idea.”

 

* * *

 

They can only connect for about ten minutes at a time once every couple of hours, when the Ark is in optimal position above her particular splotch of Earth. Raven takes half the next call detailing her ideas for stretching the connection, and Monty spends the second half explaining all the possible flaws in Raven’s plans. 

“Under-promise, over-deliver,” says Monty, and Clarke can hear Raven’s muffled _bullshit!_ in the background. 

Raven describes the overwhelming amount of maintenance work that needs to be done on the Ark, bemoaning that the rest of them are getting in her way more than they are helping. 

Next, Monty tells her about how he’s roped Emori into helping out with the farm, how he’s going to try to manufacture a serum—an old Jasper concoction—to help speed up the plant growth. 

Harper, Murphy, and Emori make appearances the next time the line connects, sounding awed and happy in a way that must have to do with more than just Clarke’s survival. They’ve got it together, up there. They’re making their past world new.

And then (finally) it’s Bellamy. Just Bellamy.

“The others got back to work,” he says. “It’s late, at least for our time. We sleep on shifts.” 

“Smart.” It’s late for her, too; her eyes are tugging down at the corners against her will. But she’ll spend the next five years waking up every 90 minutes if she has to, just to hear his voice. It would be worth it. 

“Am I keeping you from anything?” Bellamy asks, tone light. “We’ve been monopolizing a lot of your time today.” 

“Most of my time is spent sitting in an empty room staring at the ceiling, so monopolize away.” 

She means it as a joke, but it doesn’t feel like one. He pauses, just a hair too long. 

“Clarke—” 

“It’s fine, Bellamy.” 

“It’s not. It’s not _fine_.” 

“I’m safe,” she reminds him. “And you’re safe. That’s what matters.”

“I left you behind to die, Clarke,” he says, ragged. “You saved us, and I just _left you_ there.” 

“If you’d waited, we’d all be dead. Bellamy, I wanted you to leave. I wanted you to survive. You know that, right? It was the only choice.” 

If Clarke tilts her head, she can see the exact space where they last had this conversation, all those months ago. She can almost see the outline of him, slumped there in his orange suit, unwilling to even consider the possibility that she might not make it out of praimfaya alive. 

“I know. I know it was the right thing to do, but—Clarke, I’m so sorry.” 

Her heart splinters. “It’s not your fault.” 

“I’m sorry, Clarke,” he repeats. “I’m so, so sorry.” 

“Bellamy—” 

But their minutes are up; the connection’s gone dead.

Clarke has about an hour and a half to cry before the connection will work again. She uses it.

 

* * *

 

The Ark revolves around the Earth four more times, offering a blessed 40 minutes of conversation stretched across 6 hours. The circumstances of their separation don’t come up again. 

She waits until the fourth revolution before suggesting, tentative: “Bellamy, I’m sure there are things you’re supposed to be doing right now.”

“Not really.” 

“It’s okay.” She means it. “You can go. We can’t talk every 90 minutes for the next five years.” 

“Why can’t we?” 

She swallows. 

“Bellamy—” 

“Why can’t we, Clarke? Do you have anyone else to talk to?”

“No, but I—” 

“You’re alone down there.” His voice is gravelly, desperate. “You’re paying the price of getting us to space all by yourself, and if you think I’m going to let you take that burden alone, you must not know me very well.” 

She takes a deep breath, lets it out. The tension that’s nestled behind her shoulder blades is already starting to ease, as only Bellamy’s words have ever been capable of. 

“I know you,” she says. “Thank you, Bellamy.” 

“Clarke—” 

“Let’s try every day, alright?” She wipes some wetness from the corner of her eye. “Once every eight rotations? That seems more reasonable.” 

A pause. Then, reluctantly: “Monty and Raven will figure out a way to lengthen the connection soon.” 

“They will,” Clarke agrees. She’s yet to meet a science problem those two couldn’t solve. “So, I’ll talk to you in twenty-four hours?” 

“Yeah. Twenty-four hours.” 

“Get a lot done, okay?” she says, her tone falsely bright. “That way you’ll have things to tell me tomorrow and we won’t run the risk of sitting in silence for ten minutes.” 

“Stay safe,” says Bellamy, ignoring her attempt at humor entirely. 

“I’m not going to go wandering around outside the lab, you know.”

“Stay safe,” he repeats.

She nods. “You, too.”

 

* * *

 

First, she sleeps: long, dreamless, deeper than she has in weeks. 

When she wakes, she starts planning. 

Now that she’s made contact with the Ark, she has the benefit of eyes in the sky. Her friends can do some visual analysis of her surroundings, let her know whether the storms have calmed enough to make venturing outside a possibility. She figures it’ll take at least a few more months, but Raven can probably walk her through the calculations to find out for sure. 

She heads to the supply closet and pulls out pack after pack of food, splaying the contents out across one of the wide swaths of floor, tallying up the numbers on a notepad. She has enough to last at least nine months, maybe more. As long as the lab’s plumbing remains undamaged and continues to send water through the pipes, she should be fine.

In a few months, she can venture outside and scour the land for remaining signs of life. Until then, the lab is home.

It’s not really _home_ , of course—this cavernous space, a solitary fortress. But for the next while (perhaps even the next five years, depending on what it looks like outside) it will have to do. 

Up on the second floor, in one of the rooms lined with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on more empty space, Clarke finds pens and paper shoved into the desk drawer. She spreads them out along the floor, a makeshift blank canvas. 

She has five years to work on her art, most likely uninterrupted. That, at least, is a silver lining. 

By the time the full twenty-four hours have passed, she’s feeling better than she has in a long time. Her plan is set, her survival a genuine possibility, and Bellamy is alive—out there, floating above the earth, waiting to talk to her. 

So it’s a shock to her calm-for-once system when she hears the radio stir to life and Bellamy’s voice echo through the line, laced with something like panic. 

“Clarke? Clarke, are you there? Clarke!”

“I’m here. What’s happened? Are you alright?” 

There’s a brief silence, and then he sighs. “You weren’t answering.” 

She resists the urge to roll her eyes, even though it doesn’t matter; it’s not like he can see her either way. “You didn’t give me any time to answer. Be patient, it had been two seconds.” 

He huffs. “It had been longer than that.” 

“Are you sure you were pressing the right button?” 

“Shut up.”

She’s all prepared to tell him about her day, about her art room, about all the plans she’s made. But she doesn’t miss the shaky weight of his breath, that his voice still sounds pinched. She can picture the way his shoulders must be hunched, brow creased.

“Bellamy? What’s wrong?” 

What comes next is not what she expects. 

“I missed you, Clarke.” 

Clarke swallows. She tries to quell the sudden thrumming of her heart by saying, light as she can: “It’s only been twenty-four hours.”

Back when they were both on Earth, they might have danced around it. There was always too much to do, an unending list of imminent catastrophes to worry about. But three months in space must have shifted something. 

“I missed you,” he repeats. “I thought you were—” He breaks off, voice quavering like it might break, then clears his throat. “I really, really missed you.”

Her lungs are hot, breath tight. “I missed you, too. I’ve been calling you, you know. Every day.”

“Yeah?” he breathes, almost a laugh. 

“Yeah. I was hoping you’d pick up eventually, but until you did I just...talked.” 

She takes a breath. If he’s going to be honest, she might as well be, too. “It’s the only thing that really helped. Talking to you.”

“We all wish we’d been able to hear you sooner. We didn’t have anyone assigned to external communications. Monty was just working on the radio in his spare time." 

“Well, I’m glad it works now,” says Clarke. “But Bellamy, for whatever it’s worth, it wasn’t them I was trying to talk to.” 

A beat. Then, quietly: “It’s worth a lot.” 

She smiles. 

“Raven’s got some ideas for the radio. We’ll probably be able to stretch the connection so we won’t be limited to small windows. Because this whole ten minutes once a day thing isn’t going to work for me.”

“Yeah.” 

“I want you to be able to contact me any time, no matter what, and me you.” 

“If you can make that happen, that would be great.” 

“Yeah.” He sighs. “I just want you _here_ , Clarke.” 

It’s absurd, the way her heart swells. This is an objectively terrible situation; he’s hundreds of miles away, careening across the sky above what might very well turn out to be her tomb. And yet for the first time in a long time, she finds herself smiling—so wide, her cheeks ache from it. 

“That seems impractical,” she says. “We’ve only got the one rocket. But hey, in five years, you should be able to come back here.” 

“Four years and eight months,” he corrects. “Clarke, we’re almost out of time. But I’m going to call you again on the next rotation, okay?” 

“There’s definitely something else you’re supposed to be doing.”

“Clarke.”

“Yeah,” she laughs. “Okay. Sounds good.” 

She tilts her head up and imagines that through the thick metal ceiling, through the layers of soot and dust and radiating particles, through all the black clouds, she can see the Ark painting a glittering curve across the sky. 

“Talk to you soon, Bellamy.”

“Stay safe, Clarke.” 

“You gonna say that every time?” 

“Yeah. Every time for the next five years. You’re going to get sick of it.” 

“Four years and eight months. And I really don’t think I am.”

“Well, good.”

“Yeah.” Clarke smiles. “Good.”

**Author's Note:**

> [leralynne](leralynne.tumblr.com) on tumblr :)


End file.
